Summary　XPeng's intelligent driving can now help it sell more cars, but the upgrade fee itself does not make much money. The P7's Ultra SE trim has been on sale for seven months; at the highest possible option rate, the RMB 12,000 upgrade fee amounts to just over RMB 100 million. XPeng's quarterly vehicle revenue is RMB 17 billion, so this money is just a rounding error. With the Lite version installed in the Max, even fewer people will be willing to pay extra. I look at XPeng's intelligent driving only in terms of how many more cars it can help XPeng sell.

My view is straightforward: intelligent driving can help XPeng sell cars, but the RMB 12,000 upgrade fee cannot support a business. The second-generation VLA Lite is already installed in Max models with only one Turing chip, and Max owners can use it without paying extra. As a result, fewer and fewer people will be willing to spend an extra RMB 12,000 for a second chip. XPeng's value does not lie in this money.

What owners use every day: parking and highway driving

First, look at what owners actually use day to day. Soochow Securities interviewed 75 owners: 68% frequently use automatic parking, 59% frequently use NOA on highways, and only 31% frequently use NOA in urban areas.Most people use intelligent driving to let the car park itself and to follow and change lanes on the highway. Only about 30% use urban NOA every day. Those willing to pay more for higher trims are mainly this 30%.

Original chart from Soochow Securities owner interviews, 75 owners, including an XPeng sample of 20.

Capability is indeed improving. Soochow drove a fixed 20-kilometer route in Shanghai three times, and manual takeovers fell from 4 to 2 and then to 1. Hard braking decreased, erratic lane changes decreased, and narrow-road passing became more stable. These are all things encountered daily on commutes.

Original chart from Soochow Securities report; fixed 20-kilometer route, with different traffic conditions across the three tests.

What I value most is that the buyers have changed. XPeng says that among new P7 owners who chose the second-generation VLA, 80% had never used AI-assisted driving before.These people had never touched intelligent driving and were attracted to buy cars by XPeng's intelligent driving. This is the most tangible use of intelligent driving for XPeng: helping it bring in new customers. The 80% figure is published by XPeng itself, and the Soochow sample had only 20 XPeng owners. I use these two numbers only to gauge direction, and the direction is clear.

XPeng official poster; scope is new users in the early period after the P7 new trim launch.

Doing the math: how much did the RMB 12,000 upgrade fee bring in over seven months

I calculate this in the way most favorable to XPeng. First, prices: the P7 702 Max sells for RMB 203,800. Adding RMB 12,000 upgrades to Ultra SE, with two Turing chips on the car, enabling the full second-generation VLA. Adding RMB 20,000 upgrades to Ultra, with three chips plus a VLM large model.

Excerpt from XPeng P7 price page; calculations do not deduct purchase benefits.

Compare with Huawei. Huawei Qiankun ADS Max's advanced feature package costs RMB 36,000 for a one-time buyout, software only, and annual and monthly cards are also sold. XPeng charges RMB 12,000 and includes both chips and software, only one-third of Huawei's software price.XPeng set this price without intending to make money from intelligent driving on its own.

The P7 Max and Ultra SE trims launched in March, and from March to September a total of 11,673 units were registered nationwide. The only publicly available option rate is the 80% cited by XPeng, so I use that. Calculating everything at RMB 12,000, the upgrade fee including tax is about RMB 112 million; after deducting 13% VAT, less than RMB 100 million remains. Even calculating everything at the Ultra's RMB 20,000, it is less than RMB 190 million.This is the highest figure that can be calculated. The 80% was the figure for the first week after launch; for every 10 percentage points lower the option rate falls, this money decreases by RMB 14 million.

Now put it in the context of the financial report. XPeng's Q2 2026 vehicle revenue was RMB 17.05 billion, and R&D spending was RMB 2.91 billion.The upgrade fees collected on the P7 over seven months are less than 0.7% of one quarter's vehicle revenue, only enough to cover about 4% of one quarter's R&D expenses.

This money is also not visible in the financial report. The Ultra SE is sold together with the car, and revenue is counted directly in vehicle sales revenue. Q2 services and other revenue was RMB 2.70 billion, with a gross margin of 75.1%, which looks a lot like selling technology. But this growth came mainly from R&D services for Volkswagen and parts sales, and has little to do with ordinary owners buying intelligent driving. The technology revenue discussed in Article 02 is money earned from companies like Volkswagen.

Looking at a single upgrade, the profit is quite thick. Industry media estimate a Turing chip costs RMB 2,500 to 3,000. After tax, RMB 12,000 is about RMB 10,600; subtracting one chip, the gross profit per upgrade is roughly over RMB 7,500. This does not yet deduct the OMS camera and R&D amortization. The profit margin is high, but the total volume is just this small.

Lite pushed down: XPeng itself cut the upgrade fee in exchange for selling more cars<